Global consumption of coffee should not suffer substantially because of the crisis in the global economy, it could have some impact in certain special ranges of coffee, said Wednesday April 8 executive director of the International Coffee Organization, ICO, Nestor Osorio.
In contrast, in markets where coffee consumption is not sufficiently rooted habit, as in emerging countries, it could be experienced "some reduction" in demand, he admitted.
Osorio said the analysis points out that demand, whose growth rate is 2.5% a year will maintain its current momentum and trend.
"Every year we consume extra two million bags of coffee and we are approaching 130 million bags annually worldwide," he said at a meeting organized by commodity United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, in Geneva.
The head of the ICO announced that this year there will be a shortfall in production due to the characteristic two-year cycle of Brazilian coffee, which crops are immediately followed by high production rates.
He noted that the global deficit could be around 10%, which will add a unique situation: the producers do not have sufficient reserves.
To illustrate the importance of this factor, Osorio reported that "30 years ago Brazil had reserves equivalent to 25% of the world, but now has nothing, and the same goes in other producing countries."
"In conclusion, global production of 125 million bags of coffee, a consumption of 130 million and only $ 20 million in stocks of importers implies that equilibrium between supply and demand is very weak," he said.
Under these conditions, "any incident, such as frost in Brazil or a severe drought here or there could strangle the market and coffee prices skyrocket."
Speaking at the meeting of the UNCTAD, Osorio said that another "challenge" that activity is likely to face coffee have to do with the choice between "food or energy."
That is, the use of land to grow crops for biofuels .
"Here I see a difficult situation in terms of sustainability for products such as coffee or cocoa," he said, to explain right away that there is "the possibility that areas where coffee is grown now be replaced with crops ranging for food or energy ".
This is a "real threat" involving mainly Brazil and Africa, where coffee is grown on flat surfaces and can be a little less profitable.
Brazil is currently the world's largest producer of coffee, accounting for 36 percent of the market and Colombia has 8 percent, while the rest of Latin America has a market share of 19 percent.
On the consumption side, Europe accounts for 38 percent, North America by 22 and Central and South America by 23 percent.
The global value of coffee exports was 15,200 million dollars in 2008, while the value of this market, that is if you add that cost him all the cups of coffee drink in a year, is 90,000 million.

Future purchases

# Following the record high prices in New York Coffee, President Alvaro Uribe proposed to promote future purchases of grain, especially in October.
# Such a scheme, he noted, would allow producers to better recovery, and therefore an advantage of the high prices in favor of economic recovery.